Milngavie Early Years Centre

Please click on this link to view our Extended Year Calendar.

Extended Year Calendar 2020-2021 Final

Towards the end of lockdown we issued a survey. The aim of the survey was to obtain feedback from children and families on how effective we were at achieving our lockdown priorities:  maintaining relationships, continuity of learning; and supporting key experiences such as graduation and transition. We would like to thank everyone who completed the survey. We are very pleased with the results.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Milngavie EYC staff team. Lockdown was a challenging period for everyone and the team continued to deliver a high quality service to our families. Their dedication, hardwork and innovative response to such an unprecedented situation is very much appreciated. We would also like to thank our children and families and the wider Milngavie community for their ongoing support.

Here are some of the key findings from our survey and some quotes from parents about our service.

Last session our Tea and Talk Parenting Workshops were a big success! It was great to see small groups of parents getting together with Julie to discuss positive parenting approaches and share ideas. Things are a bit different this session. However, we are still very keen to continue to develop strong relationships with our parents, support families to get to know one another and promote positive parenting!

With this in mind we have decided to launch Tea and Talk Online. These 30 minute informal online chats are a great opportunity for parents (or grandparents/ carers) to find out more about positive parenting approaches. Based on the Triple P programme our first workshop will focus on six of the Top Ten Tips to Positive Parenting (see below). This session will be led by our Early Years Practitioner Angela Philip (pictured). During the session Angela will consult with parents to plan the focus of our future online workshops.

Angela Philip, Early Years Practitioner

We are delighted to work in partnership with East Dunbartonshire Council’s new Supporting Families Worker Sharon Mitchell (pictured). Sharon will attend this first online session to describe her role and highlight how families can get in touch with her to access 1:1 parenting support.

Sharon Mitchell, Supporting Families Worker

So pour yourself a cuppa and join us online at 10.00 – 10.30 on Wednesday 23 September.

Email Caroline at caroline.mcmenemy@eastdunbarton.gov.uk to be sent the link to join the online workshop or ask a member of staff for details.

One of our lovely, new children has been telling us about the ducks that he and his sister have at home.  The duck in the above pictures is “Daddles” – she is a girl and lays eggs.  His other duck is called Zachary Quack. He was very excited about having a duck rhyme as our rhyme of the week!  We are very excited to have a duck owner in nursery!!!

Our rhyme this week is Hickory Dickory Dock!  Lots of chances to explore different types of clocks, talk about the concept of time and learn a bit about mice!

In nursery we have 3 verses:

HICKORY DICKORY DOCK

Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock

The clock struck one, the mouse ran down,

Hickory Dickory Dock

Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock.

Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock,

The clock struck two, the mouse went.” BOO!”

Hickory Dickory Dock,

Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock

Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock,

The clock struck three, the mouse went “WHEE!”

Hickory Dickory Dock,

Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock

Due to Covid, we have been unable to invite parents into nursery for information sessions or family learning workshops this year.  We would still like to be able to keep you informed about the way we deliver the Early Level Curriculum, and the ways you might support your wee one at home with their learning.  One of our Early Years Practitioners, Fiona Drysdale, has written an excellent article on emergent literacy and we would like to share it with you.  We hope this will be of interest, and welcome your comments or any questions you might have.

Text is Everywhere! Letters are all around us!

Text found in our everyday environment can help develop your child’s emerging pre-reading and writing skills.

Within Curriculum for Excellence; a text is the medium through which ideas, experiences, opinions and information can be communicated.

Text includes traditional written and print form but also orally, electronically or on film.

Our Curriculum for Excellence framework takes into consideration the increased use of technology such as digital communication, social networking as well as other forms that are encountered by children and their families in their daily lives.

Examples include:

Books, short stories, poems, reference texts

The spoken word

Charts, maps, graphs and timetables, advertisements, promotional leaflets

Comics, newspapers and magazines

Letters and emails

Films, games and TV programmes

Labels, signs and posters

Recipes, manuals and instructions reports and reviews

Text messages, blogs and social networking sites web pages.

In an Early Learning and Centre environment, children are exposed to lots of different materials geared at reading and writing. When preparing activities and our environment, both inside and outside, staff at Milngavie incorporate print that is meaningful to the children.

Not only are the materials readily available to access as the children wish, but their utilisation comes naturally, through play and natural curiosity.

One way to make this meaningful is with the use of environmental print.

Environmental Print in Early Literacy Development environmental print is the print we see every day in the world around us. It marks the beginning of recognising words and letters as children learn to read and write. Children can have fun learning to read even when books are not available.

Environmental print can include the print from digital technology, posters, controls on household appliances, logos and designs on clothing, road signs, food labels and shop signs.

Children typically read print from their environment before reading print in books (Clay, 1993; Goodman & Altwerger, 1981).

Children recognise famous logos at home, at nursery, at their friend’s house and while travelling.

It is an important step in learning to read print.

At home children can identify their favourite box of cereal, tv show or game. While in the car (or walking) they can see and learn to identify restaurants and shops by their signs and logos.

Environmental print can stimulate talk about literacy as children ask questions.

It can prompt children to identify letters in signs that also occur in other words that are important to them such as their own name.

Continue this learning by asking your child what sound the letters make in the word.

Can they think of another word that begins with the same letter?

Can they find that same letter somewhere else in their local environment or at home?

Children developing an understanding that print is meaningful also promotes early writing skills. Children often imitate the writing they see for example making their own cards, notices, shopping lists and signs.

Environmental print provides lots of opportunities for children to interact with letters, sounds, and words which will help them become more aware of the language that surrounds us every day.

Fiona Drysdale

September 2020

It’s a dry day and we are happy to be out in the garden and playground.  We are lucky to have a nursery which has 2 outdoor spaces beside the playrooms and our children have settled really well into their bubbles.  We are spending another week in our current areas and then we will change over to allow all our children to enjoy both areas.  We ill be changing over on 31st August, 14th September and 28th September. Our staff will also change areas to be with their groups and our areas will be very thoroughly cleaned.

This week’s nursery rhyme is Humpty Dumpty – we are looking forward to practising our rhyme, identifying the rhyming words and sequencing the story.  We will also have great fun exploring effective wall building,  discussing the dangers of perching on high walls and looking at the effects of gravity on eggs!  Next week we are seeking out spiders and investigating Incy Wincy!

Can we remind you to let us know if your wee one is not coming in to nursery.  There are some sniffly coughs and colds around just now, and your child should stay home if they are not well.   We have to be very cautious in the current climate. If you have taken your child for a Covid test please could you let us know and provide a written copy of the result.  Thanks for your co-operation with this.

If you are going to take your child for a test, one of our mum’s who is a doctor, has offered to let you know what to expect at the Test Centre.  Please contact the nursery for more info.

Because we aren’t able to have our families in our nursery building just now, Juliana came up with the lovely idea of making a family tree for the hall.  We would be really grateful if you could send a photo of your family in to nursery for your wee one to put on the family tree.  It is reassuring for our wee children to always have access to your photo, and hopefully it won’t be too long before you can come in and see the tree too!  If you can hand your photo in to the staff member at the gate, we will make sure your child can put it onto the tree themselves.

Some parents have asked about Nursery uniform.  Our wee uniforms are very practical and cosy, and they can take the stress of getting dressed for nursery!   Polo shirts cost £6.50 and Sweatshirts cost £7.50.  This can be purchased from Baru, 5 Cowgate Kirkintilloch or online from: http://www.kitmykid.co.uk/contact-us/

This week is World Nursery Rhyme Week.  We are celebrating it by launching a focus on the awareness of rhyme throughout the nursery and would love parents to get involved in this too.

At Milngavie EYC we work in partnership with parents to support children’s learning and development. Last session we enjoyed a variety of Family Learning workshops and parents frequently visited the centre to be actively involved in nursery life. As we are unable to invite parents to participate in our activities in the centre at the moment we will deliver our family learning activities via the blog look out for our Family Learning – Parents as Partners in Learning posts.

Nursery rhymes are taken very seriously in nursery.  They can provide so many different contexts for learning, and educational research has shown that learning rhymes is extremely beneficial for language development.

“Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight. -“
Mem Fox, Reading Magic.

Nursery rhymes provide bite-sized learning opportunities for young children to develop key developmental skills and can often be the trigger for hours of creative and open-ended play. They are a powerful learning source in early literacy and enable children to become interested in the rhythm and patterns of language. Consider the alliteration in “A Sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea”, or the onomatopoeia in “Baa Baa Black Sheep?”and rhyme in “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. Many nursery rhymes are also repetitive which can support the development of memory and provide great opportunities for practising
listening and speaking.

Nursery rhymes provide other key benefits such as:

Communication and Language Development

Rhymes are fantastic vocabulary boosters. They often feature a pleasing rhythmic pattern and simple repetitive phrases that babies and young children find easy to remember and repeat. In order to develop their phonological awareness, children need to be repeatedly exposed to spoken language and nursery rhymes provide the perfect way to do this.

Physical Development

The opportunity to ‘act out’ a favourite rhyme will be a welcome activity for active minds and fidgety bodies. Physical participation in action songs encourage children to develop their fine and gross motor control skills as well as balance, coordination and the skills needed to follow simple instructions.

Numeracy

Counting songs (e.g Five Currant Buns) help to develop a familiarity with number sounds and words in a way that is fun and interesting to a young child. Songs such as “When Goldilocks Went To The House Of The Bears”also introduce the concept of scale, size and order. Familiarity with counting songs provides the foundation for crucial numeracy skills and awareness.

Understanding the World

Children can often relate nursery rhymes to their own everyday experiences and will enjoy sharing their knowledge about ducks or boats after rhyme sessions with 5 Little Ducks or Row, Row, Row Your Boat.  Some of the older nursery rhymes (i.e. Jack and Jill, Wee Willie Winkie etc) allow us to look at how life was in the “Olden Days” and widen children’s vocabulary.  Humpty Dumpty introduces the concept of gravity as well as the need for care if sitting on a wall.  The wide amount of topics featured in nursery rhymes helps us explore a vast amount of different topics.

Creativity

The act of singing a rhyme or engaging with it physically, encourages children to express themselves in a creative way and to find their own personal ‘voice’. Role play opportunities present themselves with different characters and events within the rhyme that children can respond to either individually, or as a group. Open-ended play opportunities are also possible
with paints, clay, wet sand or loose parts.

This term we are going to introduce “A Rhyme a Week”.  Each week we will focus on a rhyme and provide lots of opportunities to learn the rhyme and investigate the meaning within it, with lots of activities relating to the rhyme available in our play areas.

If you could help your child practise the rhyme as part of their bedtime story time, or by watching a youtube video of it, this would really make the rhyme much more memorable.  The World Nursery Rhyme Week website also has lots of fun activities to try and videos to watch. https://www.worldnurseryrhymeweek.com/

Eric Avenier has returned to work after furlough, but still found time to cut all the grass in the orchard and strim all our garden, ready for our pupils’ return.  This is a huge area to maintain and Eric has devoted so much of his time, this Spring and Summer,  to making it beautiful for us.

Our wee ones are really enjoying the bigger area to play and run in our garden, and the castle and stage/blackboard area that Eric created for us are in constant use.  The willow tunnel looks amazing after it’s major surgery and the flowers that Emile and Eric planted for us are blooming.

In our playground, Eric’s planters are full of climbers which soften the look of the metal fence and are lovely and colourful.  He has planted laurel trees on the other side of the playground to provide a nice green background.  The playhouse and wee bus he created last term are firm favourites with our wee people.

We are so lucky to have such amazing outdoor spaces and that Eric has given his time, energy and expertise to making them so special.

A big thank you from all the children and staff of our nursery and our school to Eric!

We have made a short video of the nursery to show you around. We filmed it from a child’s perspective to help the children think about what they will see, do and explore when they arrive next week. We are lucky to have lots of indoor and outdoor space for our children to enjoy. Thanks to Erin for her video editing skills.